Sol: ExodusReview

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Not the rebirth of the genre I'd hoped for.

By Anthony Gallegos

The look of hope and excitement I saw in the face of the developers of Sol: Exodus was infectious at PAX Prime 2011. Like so many indie games, the demo wasn't impersonal or delivered by a well-coached PR person, but the head of the studio, someone with a deep personal investment in the project. I listened intently as he detailed how he hoped Sol would be the return of the genre in a big way, a chance for a new generation of people to experience the joy of battling in space. The tiny slice of content looked promising, I walked away from the demo ready to play the next big space combat shooter.

Maybe the team at Seamless Entertainment had every intention of Sol becoming exactly that, but what's out now doesn't measure up. The rather short campaign manages to feel repetitive despite only lasting eight missions, with mission design that makes me wonder if the games I used to play back in "the good ol' days" were actually boring, and not the super exciting experiences I remember. If this is a return to form and what designers should aspire to in order to convince big publishers to make more space shooters, the genre is in trouble.

The TV series Battlestar: Galactica's influence on Sol: Exodus is apparent within seconds. Like the show, you are part of a military unit that's been completely devastated by the enemy, and are a fighter pilot on the last super powerful star cruiser. Your allies were destroyed after discovering a suitable new home for humankind, which is pretty important since the Earth is going to be uninhabitable thanks to issues with the Sun. The enemies you're fighting – despite having Cylon-like craft -- are also human, coming in the form of religious zealots who have decided to follow a crazy leader that believes the end of Earth is god's will.

The setup provides plenty of potential for instilling in you a sense of hopelessness, desperation or even tackling the ways religion is used for manipulation, but none of that is effectively explored. Maybe that's because all of the story is told via text bubbles and still pictures of people's faces in your cockpit, or because the mission structure is so repetitive, but it just feels so unintentionally campy, like a made for TV movie you'd watch on SyFy.

Plenty of beloved games had far from memorable stories, making up for it with excellent and innovative gameplay. Sol's ship-to-ship combat plays well, either with a mouse or a controller. A few minutes into it and it feels like a return to childhood, sitting in an oversized chair battling TIE Fighters with an X-Wing. But Sol does too little to mix things up. It's as if Seamless Entertainment got so caught up in recapturing the feelings of yesteryear that it neglects to think about ways to make stages feel unique. Levels boil down to rolling in with your capital ship, battling enemy fighters and then eventually taking out one or more large targets via a mindless hacking mini-game. Granted, that's not that much different from what many other critically lauded and cult-classic space combat games of the past did, but jumping into Sol's missions feels like a game that's done little to build on what's come before. A game that takes less than six hours, that only has eight missions, shouldn't feel stale by the third.

A clear lack of polish doesn't help. It's frustrating to lose a level in Sol and have to completely restart it because there are no checkpoints or the ability to save mid-mission, but it's far, far worse to lose because you clip through the walls and break it. The development team is active on the game's Steam forums, and is already patching in fixes and tweaks the community wants, but that doesn't make Sol seem anything less than a game that was released unfinished.

The Verdict

Sol: Exodus may be a step in the right direction to bring back space combat games, but it certainly won&#Array;t be the title that inspires a generation to demand more. Any gamer, and especially PC gamer, over 25 probably wants the genre to flourish like it used to, but a game like Sol, with all its bugs, repetitive levels and lackluster narrative, won&#Array;t be what brings it back. Still, at least someone out there is trying.